As there was no immediate prospect of another letter from Julia, Howard was excused from his afternoon trips to the village, and left to discharge his secretarial duties unassisted. For this reason Agatha was several hours late in learning an important bit of news. It was approaching noon on Friday when she came out upon the porch flushed and weary, after a strenuous morning, and dropped into a chair near that which Forbes was occupying. Though the young man was alone, his mood was evidently cheerful. As she approached him, his smile challenged her attention, and she pondered with frank amazement on the extraordinary effect of Julia's inane letter.
"It's Miss Kent, isn't it?" Forbes looked boyishly pleased over having guessed correctly. "I am beginning to enjoy some of the perquisites of blindness. I can recognize the footsteps of all of you. Do you know you walk with wonderful lightness for a woman of your age?"
Agatha immediately resolved to begin wearing a pair of Howard's slippers, which could be kept on only by dragging her feet.
"I've been wanting to see you all the morning," continued Forbes light-heartedly. "I've great news for you. We're going to have company."
"Company!" Had Forbes' sense of hearing reached the stage of acuteness he fondly imagined, he would have recognized instantly a note of wildness in Agatha's exclamation.
"Had a letter this morning from a pal of mine, fellow I knew in college. He's coming to-morrow to spend Sunday with me."
"To spend Sunday!" Even though Forbes was unable to perceive the frozen horror of Agatha's countenance, her appalled tone convinced him that something was wrong. His smile gave way to an expression of anxiety.
"It won't inconvenience you to put him up, will it, Miss Kent?"
Agatha found herself unable to reply. Her castle in the air was about to topple. A friend of Forbes was coming, and his would be as eyes to the blind. Through him Forbes would learn that the house was in need of painting and shingling and papering, that the furniture was in all stages of dilapidation, and that she herself was not an elderly lady with a motherly interest in youth, but a mere girl with a surprising facility in falsehood. And while these agonized forebodings flitted through her brain, Forbes was offering dismayed apologies.
"I beg your pardon a thousand times. I should have realized—Of course, this isn't a boarding-house, but the fact that you advertised for boarders, misled me, don't you see? If Warren's coming is going to put you out at all, I'll have Howard telegraph him at once."
Agatha came to herself. There was risk, of course, in granting permission for his friend's visit, yet anything was better, even discovery, than that she should appear inhospitable. Her cheeks grew hot as she recalled his generosity and saw him confused and apologetic over having asked a friend to solace his loneliness for a week-end.
"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind," shesaid with authority. "You didn't understand me. I'm only sorry not to meet your friend. I expect to be away over Sunday."
"Oh, but that's bad. I particularly wanted Warren to see you. We might telegraph him to make it Sunday week."
Agatha vetoed the suggestion. It was better that Mr. Warren should come as he had planned. "And besides," she added with swift return of her normal audacity, "if he is here you won't miss me so much."
"I shall miss you under any and all circumstances, dear lady." Forbes' air of animation had returned, and it was so great a relief to see him smiling again, that she resolutely shut her eyes to the pitfalls ahead.
"I shall get a girl from the neighborhood to do the cooking," explained Agatha. "And Miss Finch will mother you all in my place."
"But not in your way." Forbes had a confused but unflattering impression of Miss Finch, due to the fact that she never dared trust herself to converse with him for more than a minute at a time, for fear of making some unfortunate revelation. "And I'm sorry," he ended regretfully, "that Warren's not to taste your cooking."
"Oh, Hephzibah is exactly as good. I trained her."
"Good Heavens! You don't mean there's a living woman with a name like that."
"Oh, do you think Hephzibah an odd name? It wasn't uncommon when I was a girl." Agatha felt that she had taken leave of reason as well as of principle. "Hephzibah Diggs," she repeated thoughtfully. "I suppose it would have rather a quaint sound to any one not used to it."
"It's a name for the vaudeville stage," said Mr. Forbes with conviction. He returned to the subject of Agatha's other substitute. "I suppose Warren will have a chance to get more of an impression of Miss Finch than I have succeeded in doing, for he'll have his eyes to help him out. All I have been able to discover is that she never finishes her sentences."
"She's shy with men, poor girl," said Agatha, and then as he looked puzzled, "Of course she seems quite elderly to you, but to me she's only a girl."
Forbes whistled softly, shaking his head. "A blind man would credit you with immortal youth, and convict her of never having been less than middle-aged. I begin to believe that eyesight is misleading."
Agatha broke away from him before her moodof reprehensible recklessness should have implicated her still further. Then in the seclusion of her own room, she wept. "It's bad enough to stretch the truth when I positively can't help it," she told herself, "but this morning I simply wallowed in falsehood. And now I must live up to Hephzibah Diggs. Why couldn't I have called her Mamie Thompson? It's all the fault of that atrocious Warren person, and I wish something would happen to him on the way down. I suppose it's too much to hope for a railway accident, with only one passenger killed, but that would serve him exactly right."
Agatha's courage did not revive until she undertook to prepare Miss Finch for the responsibilities which would devolve upon her in the absence of the mistress of the house. Her pale eyes became unnaturally prominent as Agatha explained.
"Agatha, I can't. I'd go through fire and water for you, but I can't have a lie on my conscience. At my age I've got to prepare for death, any day, and I can't be loading my soul down with mortal sin."
"Oh, Fritz, don't be so foolish. It's not necessary to lie." Agatha's conscience gave a twinge like an uneasy tooth, as she recalled her entirelygratuitous inventions of the morning. "All you have to do is to keep from telling the truth."
"You can do it all right, you're so quick-witted, but I have to have time."
Agatha had an inspiration. "If he says anything you don't know how to answer, pretend you're hard of hearing. And make him keep repeating it over till he gets tired, or you've thought of something to say."
Miss Finch showed no inclination to rejoice over this simple solution of her difficulty. Her thin nose reddened as abruptly as if it had been pinched, and her eyes filled.
"I know I'm going to make a mess of things. I've felt from the start that no good could come of cheating a blind man. And after you go to-morrow—"
"But I'm not really going, Fritz. Somebody must do the cooking. I shall be in the kitchen, and my name will be Hephzibah Diggs."
"Hephzibah Diggs!" Miss Finch repeated, appalled. "You're going to be somebody else?"
"Only till Mr. Warren gets out of the house."
"And you picked out that name yourself, just for the fun of it?"
Agatha reddened under her old friend's accusing gaze. "I had to have some name," she protested weakly.
"You didn't have to have that. It almost looks to me as if you were getting where you took pleasure in deception."
As this only echoed Agatha's self-accusation, she exclaimed, "The idea!" with an air of indignant protest.
"It keeps me awake nights," Miss Finch continued mournfully, "the way things are in this house. It seems as if there might be an explosion any minute. You're young and light-hearted, Agatha, and you can't understand my feelings."
"Can't I, though," mused Agatha, as her old friend tottered toward the house. "And what's more, I shouldn't wonder if the explosion came off in just about twenty-four hours."
CHAPTER V
COMPANY MANNERS
Agathatook leave of Forbes about two hours before Warren's train was due. She had worked valiantly most of the morning to render the room he was to occupy approximately presentable. She had patched the worst places in the carpet, provided two chairs with seats of cretonne, and brought all the pictures from her own quarters to help disguise the defaced condition of the guest-room walls. Her feeling of dissatisfaction with the result, rather than her labors, had tired her, and she had no heart for making the most of the dramatic possibilities of the farewell. In her faded print dress, with a dusting cap drooping limply over one ear, she presented herself on the porch, hastily drawing on a kid glove, her sole make-up for her rôle.
"Well, good-by, Mr. Forbes. I'm going now."
Forbes took her gloved hand in both his. "Ihope you'll have a delightful week-end," he said cordially. "Nobody deserves it more."
"I'm not anxious to get my deserts," Agatha assured him with truth, and then to head off inconvenient questionings, "Give my apologies to Mr. Warren, and say that if it had been possible I would have been here to receive him myself. But I am sure that Miss Finch and Hephzibah between them will make you perfectly comfortable."
She released her hand and pulling off her glove as she went, betook herself to the kitchen, where Phemie was still washing the dishes from the mid-day meal. Left to herself, Phemie could be trusted to stretch that uninspiring task over the better part of the afternoon. Thanks to Agatha's presence, the splashing at once became animated.
Deprived of the stimulating companionship of his elderly hostess, Forbes decided to accompany Howard to the station. From the kitchen window Agatha watched the carryall pass and recalled the sensations with which she had first seen Forbes approaching in the same shabby vehicle. Perhaps her present apprehensions would prove as groundless as those. Agatha whistled a martial tune, as she beat up her cake, and sought diversion in addressingPhemie with that disregard of grammatical precedent to be expected from a girl named Hephzibah Diggs.
The usual number of loungers was in evidence at the Bridgewater station, and the approach of Howard and his passenger was the signal for animated comment. The rumors Agatha had been at such pains to disseminate had taken on new and startling details as the village gossips rolled them under their tongues. It was stated on indisputable authority that Forbes had been the victim of sunstroke during his South American sojourn, and that this had left him blind and with his mind permanently affected. Another equally authoritative version pictured him the slave of an appetite for liquor and accounted for his presence at Oak Knoll by the fact that the village was "bone dry." All the rumors agreed, however, in emphasizing Forbes' aversion to society, and though Howard was surrounded and questioned as soon as he stepped on the platform, it was not till the train was in sight that any one ventured to approach the vehicle where Forbes sat alone.
Howard, absorbed in the responsibilities connectedwith the recognition of Mr. Warren, failed to notice the intrusion on Forbes' privacy, but a number of other people were more observant. For once the arrival of the four o'clock express had a rival in the public interest. The unconscious Forbes was the target for a dozen pair of curious eyes, as Jim Doolittle slouched toward him.
Jim paused by the carryall and looked Forbes over with the agreeable certainty that he could make his scrutiny as prolonged and insolent as he pleased, without being called to account. Then as the noise of the approaching train warned him to make the most of his conversational opportunities, he ventured a remark: "How do you find yourself to-day?"
Forbes' face showed no change of expression. Though Jim's nasal tones reached him distinctly, it did not occur to him that he was the object of solicitude. Jim waited vainly for a reply, and then, spurred to persistence by his grinning audience, he tried again, this time lifting his voice to a bellow, as if Forbes were deaf as well as blind. "Air they treatin' you right out to Kent's?"
Forbes turned with a start. "Beg pardon! I didn't know you were speaking to me."
"You're stayin' out to Kent's ain't you, for the summer? Folks say you came for your health."
"Yes." Forbes spoke stiffly, sharing the impression of most men who have always been robust, that illness is a disgrace. "The doctors advised a change of air."
"And does Aggie Kent take good care of you?"
The formality of Mr. Forbes' manner became more pronounced. "Miss Kent," he replied, with marked emphasis on the prefix, "has made me most comfortable."
"Glad to hear it, glad to hear it," Mr. Doolittle assured him affably. "Seems as if takin' boarders was pretty risky for anybody of her age."
Forbes' irritation deepened. "Miss Kent is perfectly capable and extremely vigorous. I believe she could tire me out."
"Yes, I shouldn't wonder," Jim agreed, rather to Forbes' annoyance. "And I guess Zaida Finch steadies her down when there's a chance of her doin' something flighty."
As this suggested to Forbes the weakening of his hostess' intellect through age, necessitating the guardianship of Miss Finch, he contented himself by a disdainful silence. The approach of Howardwith a stranger in tow checked further conversational angling on Jim's part He tore himself away with a genial, "See you later," to which Forbes responded by a non-committal grunt. But he forgot his annoyance as Warren shouted his name, coupled with those abusive epithets with which his sex are wont to disguise sentiment toward one another.
Mr. Ridgeley Warren took an unaffected pleasure in his own society, which as a rule proved contagious. He was an inveterate talker, noisy, slangy, in every way Forbes' antithesis. Warren admired Forbes' dignity, and Forbes found diversion in Warren's flow of spirits. And beneath this mutual admiration was one of those steadfast affections which springing up between two men is more lasting, in nine cases out of ten, than the love between men and women.
It was fortunate that the staid bays knew the way home, for though Howard sat with the lines in his hands, he left to the horses all responsibility for keeping to the road, and turning at the right crossing. Warren told stories steadily all the way, and roared his appreciation of each. Howard laughed too, and Forbes shared their amusement, though lessboisterously. Though the horses moved with deliberation, the five-mile drive seemed short.
As they turned up the driveway at Oak Knoll, Forbes said with the pride of a proprietor, "Fine old place, isn't it?"
"You bet," agreed Warren, his eyes upon one of the splendid oaks which had given the place its name. Then beyond, he caught sight of the house, and he leaned forward for a better look. "House been standing for some time, from appearances."
"Built by Miss Kent's grandfather," Forbes replied boastfully, "and she's well on to seventy. I imagine the house is a hundred years old."
Warren, staring at the sagging roof of the old building, looked as if he could easily believe it, but unaware of his lack of enthusiasm, Forbes continued: "I'm sorry you're not going to see Miss Kent, as she's away for over Sunday. You'd fall in love with her on sight."
Warren shrugged his shoulders. "Seventeen is nearer my style than seventy. Can't you trot out some pretty girls for me to fall in love with?"
"I'm afraid Miss Finch is all we can offer you in the way of feminine society, old man, and I've foundher 'uncertain, coy and hard to please.' But you always had a way with the ladies. You might do better."
The carriage stopped at the door. Howard alighted and possessed himself of the visitor's suit-case. Miss Finch, who from the window of the living-room had watched their leisurely progress along the driveway, appeared on the porch, prepared to do her duty as hostess if it killed her. Miss Finch's nose was red and her lips were blue. Despite the warmth of the mild summer day, her teeth chattered.
Warren's hilarious air had disappeared with his first view of the dilapidated country house where his friend was spending the summer. His introduction to Miss Finch completed his undoing. He stared at the tremulous little figure in silent stupefaction. What on earth was Forbes doing in this tumbledown building with two old women for company? And the extraordinary part was that Forbes seemed contented with his quarters. Warren ascended the stairs to his room, trying to make up his mind how to handle the situation. He had an uneasy feeling that his friend was being imposed on.
The appearance of his quarters confirmed hisworst apprehensions. Warren looked around him, shook his head, and rejoined Forbes on the porch, feeling the necessity of immediate action. But Forbes' air of tranquillity made him hesitate. After all, if Forbes himself were satisfied, that was the main thing.
He broached the topic cautiously. "I judge your friend, Miss Kent, isn't what you'd call opulent."
"Hardly, or I shouldn't be here. She advertised for boarders. Some one was reading me a few of the promising ads from theOnlooker, and I recognized her name. You see I visited her once when I was a boy, and I've always remembered the beauty of the place."
"Trees are fine," agreed Warren with reserve. "But the buildings all seem rather seedy. Need paint badly."
"Do they?" Forbes spoke indifferently. "Paint is the least of my troubles."
"I suppose so. But say, Forbes, are you sure it's a good thing for you to be cooped up here all summer with two old hens?"
He had fancied he was being tactful, but to his surprise Forbes seemed irritated.
"You haven't seen Miss Kent. If you had, you'dknow that she's a regular beef, iron and wine combination."
"If she's like Miss Finch," Warren was beginning, when Forbes interrupted him with such spontaneous laughter that he dropped his sentence unfinished.
"She's about as much like Miss Finch as a collie pup is like those Teddy bears the kids lug around. She's an old lady in years, but otherwise she's as young as you or I. She's so full of vitality that you can't be near her ten minutes without feeling braced up. She's like a mountain breeze."
"Pity a woman of that sort didn't marry," commented Warren dryly.
"That's what my old dad thought. Miss Kent was his first love, and he stayed single on her account till he was well on to forty."
"Maybe that's why you're ace high with the old lady. She's trying to make up to the son for turning down the father."
"Can't say, I'm sure. I imagine it's her disposition to be kind to the crippled and disabled and generally good-for-nothing."
His tone was suddenly bitter, and Warren's look sharpened. "How's Julia?" he asked with seeming irrelevance.
"Julia's well and enjoying herself." Forbes' manner seemed to defy his friend to criticize, and Warren, who would have enjoyed nothing better than expressing his opinion of Julia, changed the subject abruptly. If Forbes liked this gone-to-seed place and the society of old women it was no concern of his. Queer how differently men were affected when their love-affairs went wrong. Some took to drink and some were women-haters. With Forbes it had developed a craving for the atmosphere of an Old Ladies' Home. Every man to his taste.
Supper partly dissipated Warren's concern. The dining-room was as rusty as the rest of the house. Miss Finch at the head of the table looked tinier and more frightened than ever. The girl who waited on the table was, without exception, Warren decided, the most unattractive specimen of youthful femininity he had ever come across. But the supper was unique. As Warren ate, his high spirits returned. Old Forbes knew what he was about, after all. A homely waitress need not trouble a blind man. Warren was almost inclined to believe that he himself could put up with the sight of Phemie's vacant face for the rest of his life, if he could be sure of three such meals every day.
In the relief from his anxiety regarding Forbes, Warren turned his attention to Miss Finch. She looked so helpless over all his jokes, that he realized the necessity of strict literalness in dealing with her. "I suppose you've known Miss Kent for a long time," he said by way of beginning.
Miss Finch paled over the shock of being addressed, but answered with unusual promptness, "Yes, ever since she was a teething baby."
In an instant she knew what she had done even before Forbes, turning a perplexed face in her direction, asked, "But you're the younger of the two, are you not?"
Miss Finch opened her mouth like a newly-landed fish, and closed it again without speaking. The device Agatha had suggested and which she had mentally dismissed as "acting a lie," thrust itself upon her recollection, and she clutched it with the avidity of the desperate. Putting her hand to her ear with the immemorial gesture of the deaf, she quavered, "What did you say?"
"I asked if you weren't the younger of the two. Miss Kent said to me the other day that she thought of you as a mere girl."
"I didn't quite catch what you said," faltered MissFinch, but before Forbes could again repeat his inquiry, Phemie created a diversion. She had taken the water pitcher to refill it, and as she advanced to the kitchen door, her tray extended before her, she looked back. It was characteristic of Phemie to walk in one direction and look in another. Agatha was beginning to congratulate herself on having at last eradicated this tendency, but she had not reckoned on the effect of a handsome and lively young man on Phemie's susceptible temperament. As she turned for another look at Warren, Phemie's tray came into collision with the door and the pitcher, overturning, broke in fragments.
As was inevitable, every one turned to look. Warren, who was in range of the door, saw it open, apparently of its own accord. A figure stood in the passageway, fairly dazzling in its effect after the gray tints of Miss Finch, the subdued tan and tow of Phemie. His eyes drank in the colorful apparition for some ten seconds and then a rounded arm closed the door. Phemie picked up the fragments of the broken pitcher, and tearfully withdrew.
Miss Finch sat through the remainder of the meal without tasting a morsel, waiting in an agony of apprehension for Forbes to ask her again whether shewas older or younger than Miss Kent. She might have spared her anxiety, for Warren's flow of conversation gave no chance for settling such minor perplexities. Warren was one of the men to whom the propinquity of a pretty woman is as stimulating as champagne. He did not think it probable that the apparition in the kitchen could hear his witticisms, but he assumed that she must realize who was responsible for the hilarity at the supper table. And even without this confidence, he would probably have talked and jested in the same breezy fashion, this form of responsiveness to beauty being instinctive with him rather than deliberate.
The moment he was alone with Forbes, Warren broached the subject engrossing his thoughts. "Burton, you have my sympathy. You don't know what you're missing. Under this roof there's as pretty a bit of flesh and blood as ever wore petticoats. Take it from me, she's a peach."
"Phemie?" exclaimed Forbes. "The waitress?"
Warren's derisive yell effectually settled Phemie's claims. "Gosh, no! That girl would stop a clock. This one was out in the kitchen, but I could see her peeking through after the smash-up."
"Oh, yes," exclaimed Forbes, recollecting. "I know. That's Hephzibah."
Warren positively staggered. "Lord, forbid," he ejaculated piously, "she can't be."
"She is, though, Hephzibah Diggs."
Again Warren's stentorian tones shattered the peace of the night. He used his first spare breath in announcing his intention to get a nearer view and see if a girl named Hephzibah Diggs could possibly be the beauty she had seemed. The announcement of this intention rendered Forbes uneasy.
"You let Hephzibah alone," he warned his friend. "These self-respecting country girls think themselves as good as anybody—theyareas good as anybody. And I'm responsible to Miss Kent for your behavior."
"I don't want anything of the girl except to see her by daylight. She's not too self-respecting for that, is she?" And then seeing that Forbes was really annoyed, Warren dropped the subject of Hephzibah, though without the least alteration in his intentions.
It did not prove so easy as he had anticipated to get a satisfactory view of the girl whose face,glimpsed in the half-light of the previous evening, had seemed so alluring. At breakfast time Phemie met with no accident, and though Warren watched the swinging door that led to the kitchen with the alertness of a cat at a rat hole, it swung open and shut without revealing anything more seductive than a corner of the kitchen table. The day was warm, but the outside kitchen door remained obstinately closed, and on the rare occasions when it opened, it was Phemie who emerged.
Warren was not a man who readily surrendered. Indeed, difficulties were likely to stiffen a careless desire into adamantine resolution. When his watch showed noon and Hephzibah Diggs continued invisible, he decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. He rose from his chair on the porch stretching his sinewy length lazily. "I believe I'll walk about a bit," he said, "and work up an appetite for dinner. With meals like these, a man wants to be able to do himself full justice every time he sits down to the table."
"You ought to try Miss Kent's cooking," boasted Forbes. "She trained this girl, and she does well, but she's not a patch on her teacher."
Warren's stroll took him no farther than thekitchen door. He ascended the steps jauntily and knocked. After waiting vainly for an invitation to enter, he decided to assume that it had been spoken, and pushing the door ajar, he walked in.
Over in the corner Phemie was chopping something in a wooden bowl, but in spite of the insistent tapping of the knife upon the wood, he was hardly conscious of her existence. A girl stood at the table rolling out biscuit, and her sleeve turned back almost to the shoulders, revealed a faultless arm, white and rounded and tapering to the finger-tips. She turned her head at his step and he thrilled with amazed pleasure. His glimpse of the previous evening had not been misleading. Indeed his impression had fallen short of the actuality. He was looking at the handsomest young woman he had ever seen.
Mr. Ridgeley Warren did not lack self-confidence. His momentary silence was due to wondering admiration, not to any doubt of his power to please. With smiling self-possession he advanced into the room. In her corner Phemie chopped on steadily, without removing her fascinated eyes from his face. Hephzibah—it was preposterous that this radiant creature should be encumbered with such a name—continued to roll biscuit.
"You seem busy here," remarked Warren in his most ingratiating manner. "Don't you want an assistant?"
He was sorry to discover that the voice of Hephzibah Diggs was not in accord with her bodily perfection. She talked through her nose and that fact impressed him so painfully he almost lost the force of her reply, "Guess me and Phemie kin manage."
"I'm quite a little cook myself," continued Warren, saddened but not discouraged. "In my last place they said my parboiled cauliflower beat anything they had ever tasted. And my string-beanparfaithas become popular in the best New York restaurants."
Phemie's delighted gasp was his sole applause. Hephzibah Diggs gave her attention to her biscuits.
Warren seated himself on one corner of the immaculate table and began to talk with his customary volubility. His remarks took the form he imagined would please a country farmer's daughter, lacking the rudiments of education. He soon realized, and with some irritation, that he was making an impression on the wrong girl. Phemie chortled joyfully over her chopping. Hephzibah Diggs listened as if it were against her principles to smile.
She brought three eggs from the pantry presently and broke them in a workmanlike manner, whites in one bowl, and yolks in another. "Got to have three more," she said to Phemie in that unpleasant nasal voice which helped to reconcile Warren to her continued silence.
A little flicker of triumph crossed Warren's face. Her sending Phemie for eggs was obviously a ruse to be alone with him. When Phemie had departed on her errand, with obvious reluctance, he leaned toward Hephzibah, his smile so confident that it was almost a smirk. She looked up with a directness rather disconcerting and he reflected that her eyes even in a face like Phemie's, would have given her a certain claim to beauty.
"I don't like men folks hangin' 'round when I'm busy." Her speech, it appeared, was as direct as the gaze of those adorable, reddish brown eyes.
"Then what do you say to a little walk when you've finished your work?"
"I ain't got the time."
"You mean you've got another fellow up your sleeve, don't you? Say, let's give him the slip. You ought to be nice to me after I've come so far to see you."
She turned her attention again to the cooking, drawing her arched brows into a frown. He noticed with approval that her beauty lost nothing of its distinction by her look of ill temper. But perhaps that was because the ill temper was a make-believe.
He leaned toward her persuasively, losing his head a little in her proximity. His pulses quickened. He thought he had never seen anything prettier than the way her hair crinkled away from her creamy neck. It occurred to him that he would like to kiss the cheek whose vivid freshness seemed an invitation to such temerity. Country people were primitive and direct. With a girl of the type of Hephzibah Diggs, a kiss was simply a natural expression of admiration.
As his lips brushed that blooming cheek, she reached for the bowl containing the egg yolks. She did not look in his direction as she flung the contents in his face, but her aim was true. He sprang to his feet with a gasp and a sputter. There was an incredible quantity of that sticky yellow stuff, matting his hair, dripping from his eyebrows, trickling in sickening streams down his neck.
"You little vixen. Does this stuff spot?"
Hephzibah ignored his inquiry. Warren backed away, laughing nervously, his mood divided between anger with her and shame for himself. Then panic seized him at the thought of encountering Phemie and he took a hasty departure, mopping himself with his handkerchief as he ran.
Howard had driven Miss Finch to church and Forbes was alone on the porch. "You didn't walk far," he said, recognizing his friend's step.
"No—o. Had an encounter with a wasp. I'll be down in a minute when I repair damages."
He hoped Hephzibah would not tell Miss Kent of the episode, but he decided to take the chance, and suggested to Forbes his coming up again in two or three weeks. To his surprise Forbes was not enthusiastic.
"It was awfully good of Miss Kent to take me in," he explained, apparently forgetful of the advertisement which was responsible for his presence at Oak Knoll. "And I don't want to bother her with too much company. I think she finds it upsetting to have strangers around, and it's not singular when you come to think of it. For all she's so wonderful, she's really getting to be an old lady."
CHAPTER VI
HEPHZIBAH COMES TO LIFE
Miss Kent'scompany at breakfast Monday morning was an agreeable surprise to Forbes, his pleasure chastened only by his regret that Warren had left on the late train the previous evening. "I particularly wanted you to meet him," Forbes complained. "If I'd known you were to be back so early I should have insisted on his staying over."
"It's only the young who can make a good impression at breakfast," Agatha responded. "Old people need twilight and candles." She raised her eyebrows in the direction of Howard, who was indicating his approval of her answer by a soundless show of spirited applause.
"I'd risk the impression you'd make any hour in the twenty-four," rejoined Forbes gallantly. "But it is too late now. Serves Warren right for being in such a rush to get back to his confounded business. Tell us all about your good time, Miss Kent."
"I didn't have one." Agatha felt the statement to be indiscreet, but her imagination was not equal to lending any glamour to her nightmare of a Sunday.
"You didn't enjoy yourself?" Forbes' voice indicated sympathetic surprise. "Why, what was wrong?"
"I didn't say I was going away to enjoy myself. I didn't expect to. You took that for granted."
"I see. One of those formal visits that are even more deadly than formal calls, because they're longer."
"And it turned out worse than I expected." Agatha was finding a certain melancholy pleasure in speaking her real sentiments. "Because I had a disagreeable encounter with a perfectly obnoxious person. But it's over, thank heaven, and I don't want to talk about it."
This topic being tabooed by mutual consent, it was natural that Forbes should begin to talk about Julia, as a theme eminently calculated to cheer the despondent, and lend interest to the most tedious hour. Agatha, listening, realized that her week was to be a hard one. It was time for Forbes to expect another letter from Julia, and of course Julia would not write so promptly as he expected, and it wouldbe increasingly difficult to keep him in good spirits. Over her coffee Agatha laid plans for distracting her boarder's thoughts from his elusive correspondent.
Her apprehension proved correct. That afternoon Howard was sent to the village to do one or two little errands for his employer, and incidentally to get the mail. The next day the same program was followed and the third brought no change. And meanwhile the arrival of the Rural Free Delivery wagon was daily awaited with an anticipation not justified by results.
Agatha starting down the long driveway one morning, as the fateful hour approached, saw Forbes and Howard on ahead, evidently bound on the same errand. Before she could turn back, Howard caught sight of her and abandoning his charge, he came toward her on the run.
"You were starting for the mail, weren't you, Aggie? Would you mind taking him along while I see if I've got a rat in my trap?" Then dropping his voice to a scornful undertone, "He's got to go himself because he's expecting a letter from his girl, and can't wait for it to be brought up. See?"
Agatha accepted the commission without comment. She joined Forbes, and taking his arm, guided him the length of the shaded drive. Neither had much to say. Forbes was evidently bracing himself for possible disappointment and Agatha was not in a talkative mood. They had hardly reached the main road before Agatha's observant eyes detected in the distance a significant cloud of dust. "He's coming," she said with a reservation in her tone intended to warn her companion not to be over-sanguine. "We won't have long to wait."
The wagon approached and halted. The driver produced a miscellaneous assortment of letters and one good-sized package, the latter he scrutinized as if reluctant to part with it. "Do you know anybody around here," he brought out with irritating deliberation, "by the name of Diggs—Hep—Hephzibah Diggs? Ain't that a name for your life?"
Agatha gazed at him wild-eyed, incapable for the moment of speech.
"It's addressed to Oak Knoll," the speaker continued. "But I thought mebbe there was some mistake. I never knew any Diggses in these parts."
Agatha recovered herself and extended her hand. "Yes," she said hurriedly. "It's all right. I'll take it."
The mail-carrier surrendered the collection. "You're getting to have quite a raft of boarders," he commented affably. "Feller has to have his wits about him to keep track of so many new names." He clucked to his horses and the wagon rattled on.
Oblivious to her responsibilities as temporary post-mistress, Agatha stood quaking. To her guilty conscience the significance of the mail-carrier's inquiry was unmistakable. He had never heard of a family in the vicinity named Diggs. He assumed that Hephzibah was a summer boarder. Agatha did not doubt that Forbes was pondering these extraordinary facts, and that his first words would demand an explanation. With hanging head she waited for him to begin his cross-examination, but his voice when he spoke was anxious rather than peremptory. "Well?"
Agatha gasped. "I—why—you see—"
"You know her handwriting, don't you?" asked the lover. "I'm not sure where this letter will be posted."
Agatha reflected that love is sometimes deaf as well as blind. So engrossed was Forbes in his own anticipations that the compromising conversation with the mail-carrier had made no impression on hisconsciousness. After a hasty survey of the handful of letters, Agatha announced in a stifled voice that there were two letters for Forbes, but neither seemed to be from Julia. Her face betrayed an emotion due not to the tragedy of Forbes' disappointment, but to the discovery that there was a letter as well as a package, addressed to Hephzibah Diggs. That young woman, the fantasy of a day, had taken on a terrifying vitality. There was no way of estimating her possible activities. Agatha's emotions were those of Frankenstein when he discovered that his monster was alive.
They made their way back to the house, Forbes valiantly explaining why it was foolish to have expected a letter before afternoon, and Agatha making irrelevant replies. She turned her companion over to Howard and escaped to her room with the mail addressed to Hephzibah Diggs. An absurd scruple regarding the opening of other people's letters temporarily paralyzed her efficient right arm, and she stood staring at the address of the communication without coming any nearer a knowledge of its contents. It was impossible to rid herself of the feeling that she was on the point of attempting something dishonorable.
"What a fool I am," she groaned in exasperation. "Hephzibah Diggs isn't anybody, but if she were anybody, she'd be me." She tore open the letter without giving herself a chance to evade the inevitable conclusion of this bit of logic.
It was from Warren, of course. She had been prepared for that, even without the testimony of his bold signature. With a curiosity that momentarily made her oblivious to the menacing aspects of the situation, Agatha read the brief communication:
"My Dear Miss Diggs:"I am writing you a line to apologize for my conduct Sunday. You were all right, and I was all wrong. At the same time, you'll have to take a little share of the blame for being so distractingly pretty that a man's likely to lose his head when he comes near you."I am sending you by this mail a package which I hope you will accept as indicating my regret for having offended you, and my sincere wish to be"Your friend,"Ridgeley Warren."
"My Dear Miss Diggs:
"I am writing you a line to apologize for my conduct Sunday. You were all right, and I was all wrong. At the same time, you'll have to take a little share of the blame for being so distractingly pretty that a man's likely to lose his head when he comes near you.
"I am sending you by this mail a package which I hope you will accept as indicating my regret for having offended you, and my sincere wish to be
"Your friend,"Ridgeley Warren."
Agatha turned her thoughtful attention to the package which bore Hephzibah's name. She proceeded to strip off the wrapping paper with a haste indicating that her scruples were finally set at rest.Then as she took the cover from the five-pound box of chocolates, and gazed enraptured at the triumph of the confectioner's art, she temporarily laid aside the feeling of age due to the faithful impersonation of her great-aunt, and became nineteen or a trifle less.
"Chocolates," murmured Agatha. "And millions of them. In the person of Hephzibah Diggs I accept the apology."
When she reappeared upon the porch, her manner was cheerful, and a number of yawning cavities marred the symmetrical arrangement of the topmost layer of chocolates in the box up-stairs. Forbes greeted her with more animation than she had looked for, considering his recent crushing disappointment.
"That's you, isn't it, Miss Kent?"
"Yes."
"Here's a letter Howard has just read me. I want you to look it over and tell me what you think of it."
"Very well." Agatha seated herself comfortably and took the letter from his extended hand. But Forbes was evidently desirous of preparing her for its contents.
"It will be a surprise to you, I imagine, MissKent. What is your opinion of Hephzibah? Is she really such a stunning beauty?"
"I suppose she would be considered fairly good-looking if anyone liked the type." Agatha flattered herself that she had spoken with a creditable lack of prejudice.
"According to Warren she's considerably more than that. The fact is, he—but you'd better read the letter. That makes it plain enough."
With a return of her previous misgivings, Agatha followed his suggestion.
"My Dear Forbes:"If you had shown a little more enthusiasm over my suggestion of dropping in on you again soon, I should have run down at the end of the week, and had a good talk with you. Owing to your inhospitable reluctance I'm obliged to trust to writing, which I sometimes think was invented, as somebody said about speech, for the purpose of concealing thought."To come straight to the point, I must confess that I had a short and not wholly satisfactory interview with the fair Hephzibah on Sunday, in the course of which my earlier impression of her beauty was more than confirmed. By jove, Burton, she positively is a dream. And the idea that a creature of that sort should spend her days amid pots and kettles is obnoxious to any right-thinking man. We've got to do something about it, Forbes. Whatdo you think of sending her to school somewhere, and having her educated? It would be virgin soil, I imagine, for the poor girl can't open her mouth without taking a bite out of the king's English, and her voice is like a guinea hen's. But that could be trained out of her. For all her ignorance, she's nobody's fool. You can see that by looking at her."Now I'm putting the thing up to you because I suppose it would be better to have Miss Kent act for us in the matter. Judging from my brief experience Hephzibah—can't we find some euphonic substitute for that name?—is as self-respecting as the devil. Explain to Miss Kent that I'm a respectable man of philanthropic tendencies—hitherto unrecognized—and ask her what would be the best way to go about taking the girl in hand, and giving her an education, or enough of one so she can make a reasonably good appearance. And then we can decide on the next step. A few hundred a year will be enough to do the job properly, and if you feel like going into it with me, it might help to reassure Miss Kent as to the impeccability of my motives."Lord! What a letter! I haven't written so much with my own fist since I was in college, and at the same time I feel as if fifteen minutes of chinning would have made the matter a heap clearer. If the girl should prove to have enough head for the legitimate stage she ought to make a hit as Katharine, inTaming the Shrew. She's exactly the type, red hair and all."Regards to the voluble Miss Finch, to Howard, and of course to Miss Kent.Yours,"R.W."
"My Dear Forbes:
"If you had shown a little more enthusiasm over my suggestion of dropping in on you again soon, I should have run down at the end of the week, and had a good talk with you. Owing to your inhospitable reluctance I'm obliged to trust to writing, which I sometimes think was invented, as somebody said about speech, for the purpose of concealing thought.
"To come straight to the point, I must confess that I had a short and not wholly satisfactory interview with the fair Hephzibah on Sunday, in the course of which my earlier impression of her beauty was more than confirmed. By jove, Burton, she positively is a dream. And the idea that a creature of that sort should spend her days amid pots and kettles is obnoxious to any right-thinking man. We've got to do something about it, Forbes. Whatdo you think of sending her to school somewhere, and having her educated? It would be virgin soil, I imagine, for the poor girl can't open her mouth without taking a bite out of the king's English, and her voice is like a guinea hen's. But that could be trained out of her. For all her ignorance, she's nobody's fool. You can see that by looking at her.
"Now I'm putting the thing up to you because I suppose it would be better to have Miss Kent act for us in the matter. Judging from my brief experience Hephzibah—can't we find some euphonic substitute for that name?—is as self-respecting as the devil. Explain to Miss Kent that I'm a respectable man of philanthropic tendencies—hitherto unrecognized—and ask her what would be the best way to go about taking the girl in hand, and giving her an education, or enough of one so she can make a reasonably good appearance. And then we can decide on the next step. A few hundred a year will be enough to do the job properly, and if you feel like going into it with me, it might help to reassure Miss Kent as to the impeccability of my motives.
"Lord! What a letter! I haven't written so much with my own fist since I was in college, and at the same time I feel as if fifteen minutes of chinning would have made the matter a heap clearer. If the girl should prove to have enough head for the legitimate stage she ought to make a hit as Katharine, inTaming the Shrew. She's exactly the type, red hair and all.
"Regards to the voluble Miss Finch, to Howard, and of course to Miss Kent.
Yours,"R.W."
Agatha was glad the letter was a long one, as this gave her time to think. And yet the result of her thinking was but a confused jumble of varying apprehensions. Her recollection of Warren's face as he leaned toward her, was that of a man not easily turned aside from a purpose. But somehow or other he must be forced to surrender his absurd philanthropic intentions in behalf of Hephzibah Diggs.
Forbes was waiting for her verdict. "Well?" he said at last, when she showed no inclination to speak. "What do you think of it?"
Agatha cleared her throat. "It's out of the question," she shot at him so violently that he looked startled.
"I'm ready to vouch for Warren," he hastened to say. "I don't mean that he would be as ready to help a plain girl as a pretty one, but I assure you that your protégée would be perfectly safe as far as he's concerned. And I suppose he's right in thinking that beauty is one of the talents, and it's hardly fair to keep it wrapped in a napkin."
"But she doesn't want to be educated," Agatha protested. "She's perfectly satisfied just as she is."
Again Forbes seemed to find her vehemence perplexing. "Perhaps her ignorance explains her indifference," he suggested. "Do you think she's capable of learning?"
"I suppose she's capable enough."
"If she's really a strikingly handsome young woman with a fair mind, and Warren is sufficiently interested in her to give her an education, doesn't it seem that she should be encouraged to accept his offer? Surely if she is what he thinks, she is capable of something better than the work she is doing at present. Unless you have some good reason for feeling that it would not do—"
"But I have," flashed Agatha. "I have."
"Oh, indeed!" He seemed to be waiting for her to explain, and she floundered on with a horrible sensation of being caught in a quicksand.
"She doesn't wish to be educated. She doesn't wish any notice taken of her; she only asks to be let alone."
"To be let alone." He said the words over as if they had a hidden, mysterious meaning. "Oh, I think I begin to see."
Agatha sighed her satisfaction. She had no idea what explanation had presented itself to the perspicacious Mr. Forbes, but she perceived that at length her protests had taken effect and he was prepared to relinquish the argument. So great was her relief that the processes of his mind failed to interest her.
Unluckily Forbes was one of the people who insist on certainty. "I suppose," he said, a note of sympathy in his deep voice, "that the poor girl has been unfortunate."
Agatha blanched. He waited for her avowal, then tried again: "You mean, I suppose, there's some unhappy episode in her past life and she doesn't want to attract attention for fear of its bobbing up again."
Agatha stared at him aghast. Her first impulse to defend the character of Hephzibah Diggs at any cost yielded to a less worthy caution. If she gave Hephzibah a clean bill of health, figuratively speaking, what other reason could she invent for her invincible repugnance to attracting attention? With fascinated horror she realized that Forbes' conjecture exactly filled the requirements of the case. There was no help for it. The fair name of the blameless Hephzibah must be sacrificed to that most merciless of the divinities, the exigency of the moment.
"You have expressed it," faltered Agatha with anunnerving sense of rank injustice, "as well as I could have myself."
"Poor girl!" Forbes repeated, "and so young, too. At least I suppose she's young, from Warren's idea of educating her."
Again he waited for an answer, and Agatha stammered, "Ni-nineteen."
"And all this happened some time ago, I suppose."
"Oh, a long time." Agatha was crimson to her ears.
"It seems a shame," mused Forbes aloud. "Her whole life to be sacrificed for one step aside from the straight and narrow path. You and I know the world, Miss Kent. And we know—"
"Oh, please," protested Agatha faintly, "I don't know anything about it."
He leaned toward her quickly, touched by the appeal in her voice.
"Excuse me, Miss Kent. I know you belong to a generation whose women were trained to shut their eyes to a great many things. I don't believe in that theory of life, but I haven't any intention of violating your prejudices. All I wanted to say was that you and I have lived long enough to know that thousands of our respected citizens, prominent sociallyand otherwise, are every bit as guilty as that poor girl. And since this is the case, isn't it a pity that her morbid sensitiveness should shut her out of making something of herself?"
It was unbelievable. Hephzibah's reputation had been blackened in vain. Even now he was unwilling to leave her in the seclusion her sensitiveness craved. He was determined to drag her into a garish publicity. Iphigenia had been sacrificed and still the winds were unfavorable.
"Oh, I wish you would not talk of this any more," cried Agatha, the intensity of her feeling showing in her moved voice. "I understand Hephzibah's case a great deal better than you do, better than you ever can. And I know that the thing you're talking about is out of the question."
His face reflected her agitation in the shape of profound sympathy. "You're sure that if we talked it over, we wouldn't find a way out? Two heads are better than one, you know?"
"I'm absolutely certain."
"Then I won't distress you any further. Of course Warren has barely seen the girl, and it's evident that his head was a little turned by her beauty. You know her, and I'm sure you appreciate the responsibility of deciding a question that concerns her so closely, without even consulting her."
"I can speak for her as I would for myself."
"Then I'm sorry if the suggestion has worried you. I'll see you're not bothered again." He spoke confidently, and Agatha hoped he did not overestimate his influence where Ridgeley Warren was concerned. When she remembered the square chin of the last-named young man, she did not feel sure.
In her heart she gave Forbes credit for having done his best. Later in the day Howard showed her a letter he had written to Mr. Ridgeley Warren at Forbes' dictation. Without explanation but in the most emphatic manner possible, Warren was assured that his scheme was impracticable. "I can not very well go into details," the letter ran, "but Miss Kent, who knows the case thoroughly, has convinced me that the kindest thing, as far as the girl is concerned, is to leave her alone." And to this sentiment Agatha sighed a tremulous amen.
CHAPTER VII
DAY DREAMS
Forthe first time since she could remember, Miss Finch felt herself living in an atmosphere of romance. If a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love only under the allurements of spring weather, Zaida Finch surpassed the average youth by full three seasons. Love and matrimony occupied her thoughts twelve months in the year, and to an extent inconceivable in view of her general colorless and withered aspect.
Though as far as possible removed from the designing spinster of the comic stage, Miss Finch had not as yet surrendered the hope of changing her name. From her point of view the unmarried woman was a self-advertised failure. Husbands, as far as she had been able to observe, were always disappointing, and not infrequently obnoxious, yet to lack one somehow proved one's self less than awoman. In those dreams which never passed the bounds of maidenly reserve, she sometimes imagined herself addressed by the prefix which indicates the dignity of wifehood—she would have died sooner than have coupled it with the name of any man of her acquaintance—and then in the words of a simpler and more direct age, she felt that her reproach among men had been taken away. The secret weighing heaviest on her heart was the knowledge that no man had ever indicated that he wanted her.
Needless to say, Miss Finch's present mood of sentiment was entirely vicarious. Agatha's prospects absorbed her almost to the exclusion of her own timid dreams. Miss Finch was constitutionally incapable of realizing Agatha's vivid beauty, though she sometimes told herself that if it were not for her red hair, which she innocently assumed to be a misfortune, Agatha would be a really pretty girl. Forbes had no sooner made his appearance than Miss Finch had inventoried his qualifications for Agatha's future husband, and had not found him altogether wanting. His blindness was a misfortune largely offset by his amiability, and free use of money, and in her association with him, Agatha had developeda sympathetic patience her old friend could not regard as characteristic.
"And it looks to me as if he were taken with her," Miss Finch had congratulated herself. "He chirks up as soon as she comes near him. If he likes her so well when he thinks she's an old woman, he ought to like her better when he finds she's a young one."
There was, to be sure, one serious difficulty to be met in the readjustment of Forbes' ideas on the important subject of Agatha's identity. At this point Miss Finch's dreams ended in chaotic confusion and with her oft-repeated lament, "There's no good going to come from cheating a blind man."
After Warren's visit, Miss Finch's match-making tendencies took another direction. If Warren had failed to make an impression on the unsusceptible Hephzibah, he had nothing to complain of as far as Phemie and Miss Finch were concerned. In spite of the agitation induced by her unwonted responsibilities on the occasion of Warren's visit, Miss Finch had been keenly alive to the young man's cheerful good humor, and his naive self-enjoyment had communicated itself to the one of his audience whoseemed least responsive. "Exactly the one for dear Agatha," declared Miss Finch.
With the discovery of the source of the box of chocolates, Miss Finch's smoldering hopes leaped into flame. Caution had dictated Agatha's concealment of Warren's tangible apology, but to a girl of her temperament the solitary consumption of a five-pound box of confectionery was a moral impossibility. Her innate generosity forced her to share the sweets with Forbes and Miss Finch and Howard and even with Phemie. Three of her beneficiaries accepted their shares as unthinkingly as the lilies of the field, but Miss Finch showed a troublesome tendency to ask questions.
"Agatha, you don't mean you've been wasting your money on candy? A box of that size must have cost something awful."
"No, Fritz, I didn't buy it."
Experience had taught Miss Finch to be on her guard when Agatha wore that look of wide-eyed innocence. She pondered the seemingly straight-forward reply.
"Having things charged is the same as buying 'em, Agatha. You've got to pay for 'em some time."
"But these were given me, Fritz dear. They were an apology."
"Mr. Forbes!" gasped Miss Finch, and at once the strains of the wedding march rang in her ears.
"Mr. Forbes! The very idea! The only trouble with him is that he never did anything in his life to apologizefor. He's so perfect that people mistake him for a worm and trample on him."
"I didn't mean to make you mad, Agatha," Miss Finch protested timidly, shrinking from the flame in Agatha's eyes. The inexplicable girl stared for a moment and then to Miss Finch's great relief, burst into a laugh.
"Fritz, you're funnier than a box of monkeys. If you must know, Mr. Warren sent the chocolates."
"To you?" Miss Finch almost screamed it. And forthwith the summer breeze brought to her nostrils the odor of orange blossoms.
"That's the question that's troubling me, Fritz. The box was addressed to Hephzibah. But as I am her nearest living relative—you might almost say her mother—"
Miss Finch swept these fine points aside. "I didn't know he'd ever seen you."
"He walked into the kitchen while you were atchurch. That's exactly his style, I imagine. And when he saw me there rolling biscuits, he talked a lot of nonsense and ended by kissing me."
"Agatha!" gasped Miss Finch. Her emotions were confused. She was under the impression that this recital confirmed her wildest hopes and at the same time outraged her finer sensibilities. Possibly her reprehensibly exultant feeling was due to an overwhelming certainty that this at least was life.
Her face aflame as if she and not Agatha had been the recipient of that kiss, Miss Finch attempted to discharge her responsibilities as mentor of youth. "Agatha, I can't understand it. I'm afraid you must have acted bold. I never heard of a gentleman's walking into a kitchen, and kissing a young lady he'd never seen before."
"Nor I, Fritz. And that leads me to the conclusion that Mr. Warren isn't exactly a gentleman. At the same time," Agatha added, helping herself to another chocolate, "he apologized very sweetly."
"Is he coming to see you?" demanded Miss Finch, who in her ignorance of the ways of the great world assumed that so spontaneous a tribute must be merely preliminary to an ardent courtship.
"He had an idea of taking my education in hand."Agatha briefly outlined Warren's philanthropic scheme in behalf of Hephzibah Diggs, and Miss Finch turned all colors as she listened. Now at last she knew that the romantic novels with which she solaced her leisure hours had not misled her. There reallywassuch a thing as love at first sight.
"Agatha!" she ventured tremulously, "you could marry that man to-morrow if you liked. It's as plain as the nose on your face that he's dead in love with you."
"If it were as plain as the nose onhisface, that would settle it. But as nothing would induce me to marry him to-morrow or any other day, the state of his feelings doesn't matter."
"But I'm sure, Agatha," remonstrated Miss Finch, "that you wouldn't want to break his heart."
Agatha's reply was a paroxysm of laughter that left her gasping and tearful. "Oh, Fritz," she half sobbed, as she wiped her eyes, "I'm so glad you didn't die when you were little."
Miss Finch was on her dignity. "I know you're making fun of me, Agatha. But it's no laughing matter to wreck a man's life."
Again Agatha yielded to mirth. "You've seen Mr. Warren and yet you say that."
"I can't see why you take that tone, Agatha. I'm sure he's a nice young man and so lively."
"I'll admit the liveliness but not the heart, at least not the broken heart. That young man owns a good, tough, thoroughly seasoned organ, take it from me."
Miss Finch sighed but with less dejection than her manner indicated. Little as she had learned of the ways of men and women in her guileless spinsterhood, she had somehow gathered the impression that girls occasionally abused the admirers who stood highest in their maidenly affections, for the pleasure of hearing them defended. And though she could not be sure that this explained Agatha's slighting references to a most agreeable young man, Miss Finch resolved to lose no opportunity of sounding Warren's praises. In his case, too, there was an unfortunate confusion of identity to be cleared up, but from Miss Finch's point of view, a young man who could give a kiss and a mammoth box of chocolates to a pretty girl, under the impression that she was a servant, would not hesitate to lay his heart at her feet when he discovered that her blood was as good as his own.
Developments convinced Miss Finch of the wisdom of her chosen tactics. She overlooked no opportunity to speak a good word for the absent Warren, acquiring a certain irrelevant eloquence on the theme. And though Agatha gave no indication of agreeing with her, it was evident that she enjoyed her earnestness and was more inclined to lead her on than to check her fluency.
Whether because of Miss Finch's judicious opposition or some less obvious reason, Agatha was in noticeably high spirits. She entered into playing her rôle with a whimsical abandon that at times moved even Miss Finch to laughter, in spite of her conscientious misgivings. Indeed the spirit of cheerful animation pervaded the entire household. Whether because Forbes had at length resigned himself to hearing from Julia only once in two or three weeks, or whether the improvement in his health furnished the necessary elasticity for resisting disappointment, his moods of depression were becoming very infrequent. He spent less time on the porch and more on long jaunts with Howard. The two went fishing frequently and sometimes Agatha made a third, in which case the pace was regulated strictly according to Forbes' view of what was due her advanced years. Agatha was sure she would find more enjoyment on the occasions when the twomales went as fast and as far as they pleased, undeterred by consideration for the aged.
One exhilarating morning Forbes and Howard left soon after breakfast, taking their luncheon with them, and advising Agatha to expect them only when she saw them. With her customary knack for utilizing the moments, Agatha improved their absence to despatch a number of tasks awaiting her attention, and wound up by washing her hair. She made her appearance on the lawn in the early afternoon, her splendid mane falling almost to her waist and reflecting the sunshine like burnished copper. Already the little tendrils were beginning to curl about her face while the water dropped from the long ends.
Agatha seated herself in the sun, lifting the coppery mass strand by strand, that it might dry more quickly. Had Miss Finch been versed in classical lore, she might have been reminded of the golden fleece for which men risked so much. As it was she said chidingly, "Agatha, you will freckle terribly if you're not careful."
"This sun is worth a peppering of freckles," Agatha answered recklessly, but she pulled her hair over her face and then she resembled Danäe veiledby a shower of gold. It was several minutes before she made a peek-hole in the screen, and looked at Miss Finch apprehensively.
"Fritz, I hear wheels. Don't tell me that in spite of my repeated warnings, we're going to have callers."
Miss Finch stood up. The very slight advantage due to an upright position was sufficient to enable her to recognize the occupant of the approaching vehicle. "It looks to me like Jim Doolittle."
"Jim Doolittle!" exclaimed Agatha, amazed. "Why, what can he want? He must be coming to see you, Fritz."
"Agatha!" quavered Miss Finch, and flushed a painful purple.
"Well, he certainly isn't coming to see me, and I find it hard to believe that Phemie is the magnet. He doesn't know Mr. Forbes and Howard is a trifle young to attract him. Please see what he wants, Fritz."
"I—I'd rather not, Agatha."
"Why, Fritz, what ails you? You can see for yourself that I'm in no condition to interview Mr. Doolittle. His modesty would never survive the shock. Send him away as soon as you can. Itwon't do to have all the busybodies of the neighborhood dropping in whenever they feel like it."
Reluctantly Miss Finch departed on her inhospitable mission. But it seemed that Agatha had done Mr. Doolittle an injustice. He had come on an entirely altruistic errand.
"There was a telegram at the office for Aggie's boarder, and I offered to bring it out, being as I was driving by."
"A telegram for Mr. Forbes!" fluttered Miss Finch, forgetting her shyness in sympathetic concern. "I hope there's no more trouble in store for that poor young man."
"Wal, the Bible says to him that hath shall be given, and I've noticed that's likely to come true, as far as trouble's concerned. How's the poor feller getting on? I had a little talk with him one day, and I made up my mind he warn't the June-bug sort of crazy, just the glum, hold-your-tongue kind."